Forty-nine eggs were laid this week... well, 50 counting the one my daughter found in the barnyard that had no shell at all... but only 40 eggs were taken in for consumption.

Friday afternoon, one of the Silver Laced Wyandottes moved into one of the nest boxes with the intent of hatching out the five eggs that were in there at the time. I pulled her out and collected the eggs, not wanting her to go broody on me. When I took her out of the next, she stayed down in the straw, all flat and spread out like she was still trying to hatch the eggs.

I told my wife about this and we thought it might be interesting to let her hatch some eggs out, although I was planning to wait until spring to do that (one reason I got the Cochin/Silkie crosses last week). I decided not to worry about it because the last time a Wyandotte went broody, she broke the first day after I took her off the nest and confiscated the eggs.

Saturday I went in to collect eggs and... there she was again, this time in the box next door. I decided to let her sit. I wasn't sure how many eggs she was sitting on, so I took the three I collected from other boxes and slipped them under her.

Yesterday she was still sitting faithfully, and I took her out of the nest long enough to count how many eggs were in the clutch. One under each wing and seven in the nest. Nine. It must have been a busy day in the henhouse, considering six eggs were laid in the same box.

This morning she peeked her head out when I let the other chickens out and called them to feed. I went into the tack room to get a handful of scratch for her - I didn't know if she'd gotten the chance to eat yet since she started this little enterprise - and found she was off the nest, eating with the others. I checked just before I left for work and she was still off and had disappeared - probably looking for some dust for a dust batch (good luck this time of year in Ohio). Hopefully she's back on the nest at this writing.

I expect she'll be back on the nest by the time I get home. If not, well, it was an interesting experiment while it lasted - making it a good thing that I got the aforementioned chicks so I could have some broody mommas in the flock.

If the Wyandotte continues to sit, I'm going to subdivide the nursery and move the entire next box with her sitting into the new section to give her a little space to finish the hatch and raise the chicks (the box stands free on the floor and I have another next box I can put in its place while it is "gone"). But this all depends on whether or not the Wyandotte mother has lost interest in the next or not. We'll see.